Howie Mandel, one of the judges on the hit NBC-TV series “America’s Got Talent,” has got a Pennsylvania surprise for fellow judge Piers Morgan that he’ll pull out on the show this week, Mandel told the crowd watching his stand-up routine Sunday at Cove Haven Resort in the Poconos.

Mandel told the crowd he bought something in Pennsylvania on Sunday that he’ll use to scare Morgan on the show , which airs at 8 p.m. today and 9 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday on NBC-TV. He didn’t further identify what it was or what he was going to do, but said of the item, “you’ll be able to tell it’s from Pennsylvania.”

“You’ve got to watch,” Mandel told the crowd.

That exchange showed how totally Mandel, now 55, has transformed himself in recent years from manic comic contorting and twisting his arm for emphasis and ending his shows by using his nose to blow up a latex surgical glove stretched around his head to being far more identified as a TV host.

Mandel’s hour-long show at Cove Haven made several references to the show, on which he replaced David Hasselhoff as a judge last year. Perhaps that’s to be expected: with the show grabbing the top two places in Nielson’s television ratings last week (with 14.1 million viewers), it has clearly raised his profile.

Later in his hour-long routine, Mandel said – I think it was a joke – that he’ll shave his eyebrows on the show tonight, then let hair at the hairline on the bald hairstyle he wears grow to replace them.

“People will say, ‘Howie, why are you surprised?” he said.

When someone in the crowd said they hated Morgan, Mandel told them not to. “I don’t hate him,” he said. “He annoys me, but …”

Mandel also made reference to his work as host of the big-money NBC game show “Deal or No Deal,” saying that while he was its host, he “was inappropriate,” using his show instructions with his wife during sex.

“She said, ‘No deal,’ “ Mandel said.

None of that is to say Mandel's routine wasn't entertaining. It was, very much. Often very funny, too.

Mandel spent a good deal of his routine talking about sex and sex-related matters, including asking the audience whether it’s true that hospital emergency room personnel encounter people with strange items in their rectums.

When one woman in the audience responded that it was true, Mandel said, “Yes? The floor is yours.”

In fact, a good deal of Mandel’s act was him riffing on the audience – often responding to comments or questions.

“I had an act – then I met you people,” Mandel said. Late in the show, he even started asking audience members questions.

Mandel didn’t entirely abandon his pre-TV-host past. Halfway through the show, people started calling for him to “Do Bobby,” referring to the TV cartoon “Bobby’s World” that was based on Mandel’s childhood and for which he voiced the high, squeaky-toned title character.

He complied, then explained how the voice for Bobby, the character Gizmo from the 1980s movie “Gremlins” and Skeeter, the female Muppets character – not only all were voiced by him, but all were the same voice.

Then he lowered the voice slightly and did a very funny riff on having his voice stuck by helium.

“Isn’t it crazy I made a living doing that?” he said.

But clearly no more. There was no encore – and certainly no surgical glove on his head.

JOHN J. MOSER has been around long enough to have seen the original Ramones in a small club in New Jersey, U2 from the fourth row of a theater and Bob Dylan's born-again tours. But he also has the number for All-American Rejects' Nick Wheeler on his cell phone, wrote the first story ever done on Jack's Mannequin and hung out in Wiz Khalifa's hotel room.

OTHER CONTRIBUTORS

JODI DUCKETT: As The Morning Call's assistant features editor responsible for entertainment, she spends a lot of time surveying the music landscape and sizing up the Valley's festivals and club scene. She's no expert, but enjoys it all — especially artists who resonated in her younger years, such as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Tracy Chapman, Santana and Joni Mitchell.

KATHY LAUER-WILLIAMS enjoys all types of music, from roots rock and folk to classical and opera. Music has been a constant backdrop to her life since she first sat on the steps listening to her mother’s Broadway LPs when she was 2. Since becoming a mother herself, she has become well-versed on the growing genre of kindie rock and, with her son in tow, can boast she has seen a majority of the current kid’s performers from Dan Zanes to They Might Be Giants.

STEPHANIE SIGAFOOS: A Jersey native raised in Northeast PA, she was reared in a house littered with 8-tracks, 45s and cassette tapes of The Beatles, Elvis, Meatloaf and Billy Joel. She also grew up on the sounds of Reba McEntire, Garth Brooks and Tim McGraw and can be found traversing the countryside in search of the sounds of a steel guitar. A fan of today's 'new country,' she digs mainstream/country-pop crossovers like Lady Antebellum and Sugarland and other artists that illustrate the genre's diversity.